Dr Victoria Alexander

Staff details

Victoria D. Alexander (AB, Princeton; AM, PhD, Stanford) is Senior Lecturer in Arts Management. She joined Goldsmiths in September 2015 as the Programme Convenor of the BA (Hons) in Arts Management. She moved to Goldsmiths from the sociology department at the University of Surrey, where she taught sociology of arts and cultural organisations, and previously taught sociology of culture and organisational behaviour at Harvard University.

Her research has been in the intersection of sociology of the arts, visual culture, sociology of organisations, and sociology of culture – all areas directly relevant to Arts Management. She has studied the funding of art museums, current challenges facing the arts, cultural policy in comparative perspective, sociology of the arts, neighbourhoods, and visual culture. In current interdisciplinary work, she studies aesthetic fields, user-generated reviews of cultural attractions and arts policy.

Her books include

Art and the Challenge of Markets, Volume 1: National Cultural Politics and the Challenges of Marketization and Globalization, co-edited with Samuli Hägg, Simo Häyrynen and Erkki Sevänen

Art and the Challenge of Markets, Volume 2: From Commodification of Art to Artistic Critiques of Capitalism, co-edited with Samuli Hägg, Simo Häyrynen and Erkki Sevänen

Art and the State: The Visual Arts in Comparative Perspective, co-authored with Marilyn Rueschemeyer

Sociology of the Arts: Exploring Fine and Popular Forms

Museums and Money: The Impact of Funding on Exhibitions, Scholarship and Management

Academic Qualifications

AB (Sociology) summa cum laude, Princeton University, 1981.

AM (Sociology), Stanford University, 1985.

PhD (Sociology), Stanford University, 1990.

Teaching

Dr Alexander currently contributes to modules in arts management, arts and cultural theory and cultural policy. Previously, she has taught organisational behaviour, cultural organisations and industries, sociology of the arts, visual culture and research methods (qualitative, mixed, visual, and documentary methods).

Dr Alexander has been active in the sociology of the arts and in arts management. She is on the Advisory Board of the Research Network on the Sociology of the Arts, European Sociological Association, and previously served as Decana (Senior advisor), Chair, and Vice-Chair for the Network. She organised the international conference, Great Expectations: Arts and the Future, organised or co-organised numerous conference sessions on arts and culture in the US and Europe, and was Guest Editor, with Anne Bowler for a Special Issue, ‘Art at the Crossroads’ for the journal Poetics.

In 2012, she led the multi-disciplinary Surrey Light Project (EPSRC, Award Reference: EP/J501566/1), which commissioned visual artist Tine Bech to create a light sculpture, inspired by the science of light, which was exhibited in Guildford Castle, Guildford, England.